MY VISITORS

Subscribe To

Monday, January 31, 2011

I guess I've stressed strongly enough how territorial and clique-ish we were at camp. We existed in groups and affiliations mattered to us. Long before my group was established, though, my first few friends were all girls. Do you remember the movie "The Little Rascals?" Well, we weren't that young but we behaved the same way. The girls only ran with girls --- the boys only played with the other boys. Of course, the boundaries were destroyed when we grew up, but let me show you this clip from "The Little Rascals", to explain what I mean...

Well, we did not really hate the boys like the kids in the movie. We did not think they have cooties. We did not think they were gross. I don't know if they thought we were gross but --- we did not think that of them. Actually, I'm not sure why we were not friends with the boys when we were young, I guess it's just how it is. But anyway, the point of this post is to relate to you THE MOST MEMORABLE GIRLS vs BOYS FIGHT in camp (to us, at least).

I can't remember how old we were --- eight or ten, I'm not sure. My girl friends and I were playing at our house and the boys came to taunt us. I cannot remember how it started, but I remember that the boys were throwing stones at us, so we decided that it was only smart to throw stones back at them. Three boys against four or five of us... we began throwing stones at each other. I got hit a few times and that really pissed me off. They were stronger so they were throwing more stones than we could handle and I thought I was some kind of "karate kid", so I picked up a STONE whispered something like: "You can do this Crickette" under my breath, closed my left eye, seriously aiming at Stanley's face, and then threw the stone.

The next moments happened in slow motion. I threw the stone and it landed straight on Stanley’s forehead. After he received the impact, he cupped his hands over his head (and I felt so triumphant because I could see that he was in pain). Sadly, when he took his hand down, he found out that his forehead was bleeding and blood trickled down from his wound.

My jaw dropped. I think all our jaws dropped at the sight of the blood. In my head I was thinking: “I did not know my aim was that good! Am I really some kind of karate kid?” but my concentration broke when Stanley decided to run home, with parting words: “P***ng In* ka! Lagot ka sa kuya ko!”("M***er F****r! You’ll be hearing from my brother!") That was my cue. I ran so fast into our house. My girl friends followed behind me. We did not speak. I started to cry. We were definitely in shock.

After a few minutes I heard his brother: “Who is Crickette?” My friends said I did not have to go out, but he shouted again: “Who is Crickette?”, so I decided to meet him outside. I opened the front door, the door felt heavier than usual, and when I finally got out, I said: “Why?”

Brother: You’re Crickette?

Me: Yes

And he left. He just left… and for years I did not understand what had happened. Of course, when I finally became friends with Stanley’s brother, I found out that when Stanley came running home, he just asked who did it and Stanley pointed to my house and said: “Crickette did this to me!”. His brother was expecting a big bully to come out of the house, but a skinny girl did. He left because he could not believe it, and Stanley got more than a wound on his forehead that night. Apparently, he got scolded for picking fights with girls --- and I never let Stanley forget that day! Hahahahaha!